The game of baseball is a popular recreational and professional sport played across the world. Baseball and softball bats have had the same basic design for over a hundred years. In a traditional bat, a round barrel slims down to a round handle that has a knob on its end to keep a player's hands from sliding off the handle. The circular cross section of the handle does not provide a feature to orient the batter's hands relative to each other, or to the angular position of the bat. Correct hand positions as well as the orientation of the grain in a wooden bat have been shown to improve hitting distance, bat durability, and batter comfort.
The most common available method to maintain hand orientation and batter comfort are molded flexible grips that are roughly cylindrical in shape and are split or slit to allow installation over a bat handle. The molded flexible grips rely on friction from the interference fit with the handle to maintain position and usually incorporate finger grooved or raised sections designed to position the batter's hands relative to the grips. The grip extends essentially entirely around the baseball bat handle, so that the larger cross section and the finger notches have a significant impact on how the bat feels. Installing prior art bat grips creates a jarring transition from use of the grip to use of a bare bat handle, which is problematic for times when the grips are not available or for leagues that do not allow aftermarket grips on bats.
A second available method to maintain hand orientation and batter comfort is called a V-grip bat as described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,086,973. The V-grip bat incorporates a handle cross section that has two flattened sections or a rounded triangular shaped cross section. The V-grip bat design helps orient the batter's hands relative to each other and the bat. However, since the feature is integrated into the bat, adjusting for a particular batter's preferences and/or growth is problematic without buying another entire bat. The V-grip bat can be expensive and limits the batter's options to the particular V-grip bat that is purchased. Since the V-grip feature is part of the bat substrate material, the feature does not provide significant vibration damping.